Westcrest Park

January 18th, 2010, 08:00 AM

So Tim and I went and walked around Westcrest yesterday. There's plenty of room for golf in there. Which part of the park is specifically being looked at for the potential course? The northeast, around and beyond the water towers? We didn't get to check out the lower east portion of the park, but the map made it look like it was pretty crowded with hiking trails.

That underbrush will take a lot of work to clear fairways, but it can be done. We didn't notice a rampaging mob of blackberries, just clumps here and there.

No blackberries . Hopefully the parts of the park we didn't see are equally blackberry free.

Last edited by ChUcK; January 18th, 2010, 08:02 AM.
Reason: Hmmm. Can a mod edit the thread title for me? Apparently I got lost at C.

The only thing miraculous about ICP is the fact that their children look like them...

So Tim and I went and walked around Westcrest yesterday. There's plenty of room for golf in there. Which part of the park is specifically being looked at for the potential course? The northeast, around and beyond the water towers? We didn't get to check out the lower east portion of the park, but the map made it look like it was pretty crowded with hiking trails.

That underbrush will take a lot of work to clear fairways, but it can be done. We didn't notice a rampaging mob of blackberries, just clumps here and there.

No blackberries . Hopefully the parts of the park we didn't see are equally blackberry free.

So the proposed course layout that I have, that i will share with all who show up & with development engineers at the meeting on the 6th. propose to utilize the southwest & southeast corners of the park. there's a "bridge to nowhere" that would overlook the front 9 & then the woods just southeast beyond the parking lot for the back 9. Of course its up for discussion. The woods where the water towers are,as well as to the north,just go on for about 100 acres. So i figure if they don't like my ideas,I have about 100 acres to work with,that honestly nobody but the homeless are utilizing.

Comment

I wanted to take a look at the southern part of the park last weekend, but didn't get a chance to. If it's more level, I think that would be much more amenable to a course being installed. The area Chuck and I scoped out was over by the water tanks and it was a difficult terrain to put a course on. That big hill you drive up to get to Lakewood? That's the hillside that makes up the NE-E part of the park. There is a lot of space there, for sure, but it'd be some tough installation. There also might be environmental concerns raised, if not now, then in the future.

There are a few other concerns I see with the park. One is that it's pretty heavily utilized already, as Cold Steel pointed out from the last meeting there. Another is that there's seriously limited parking there from what we saw. And also, as Chuck alluded to, the woods there are DENSE. There would need to be some significant chopping and sawing, from what I saw, in order to make feasibly fairways.

That's not to say that this park doesn't have potential. It could be a very cool woods course if we were able to work with it. Those familiar with Hamlin Park in Shoreline, this could be similar to that. Unlike Hamlin though, the woods here aren't as highly trafficked, so there's still significant understory (the lack of understory at Hamlin was one of the main reasons a course didn't happen there).